Leonidas Tudas
Leonidas Tudas (400 - 441) was a Bicanal soldier and assassin. He is best known for murdering Aberforth Canting and subsequently being acquitted, which sparked the War of the Dorian Houses. Early life Leonidas was the son of a brewer, Gelasius Tudas, and grew up in a poor district in Arphisport. As such, he turned to theft from a young age, and principally made his living from stolen money. In 412, Leonidas was jailed after being caught robbing a bakery, and his family refused to pay his bail. Leonidas was freed instead by a mentor of his, Nikodemos Hesor, with whom Leonidas lived out his adolescence; in 417, deciding he needed to "go straight," Leonidas got a job as a courier, although he would still commit occasional acts of petty theft. War in Bicana In 427, Bicana rebelled against the Dorian Empire, and Leonidas was quick to join the rebels' side. He quickly rose through the ranks, owing to his talents in stealth, and became one of Bicana's best espionage experts. Fearing a repeat of the bloody Farelian War, Bicanal leaders grew increasingly willing to carry out covert operations and assassinations, and Leonidas was one of the leaders in that department. The culmination of Leonidas' career for Bicana came in the spring of 433, when he was sent to assassinate the obstinate Dorian governor Aberforth Canting. To carry out the operation, Leonidas procured a suit of Dorian armor with watchman insignias, and impersonated an officer of a nearby camp in order to gain access to Canting. Aberforth had two bodyguards in his tent, whom Leonidas had to dispatch near-simultaneously before closing in and murdering Canting himself. Finally, Tudas abandoned his armor in the tent and escaped in a dark outfit to capitalize on the shadowy environment. However, after Bicana was granted its independence, Prime Minister Laurentios Merricon controversially arrested Leonidas for the assassination, in an attempt to prove that the now-independent state was "committed to fair and aboveground dealings." Merricon offered to execute Leonidas on behalf of the Dorian government, but King Albus III refused and instead called for Leonidas' acquittal. Thus, Leonidas went free, but the decision was met with heavy outrage among the Dorians. Dorian operations After Albus III was captured by Belthionist forces in the War of the Dorian Houses, Leonidas decided that he would find a way to free Albus out of gratitude for Albus' earlier pardoning of him. He spent a number of months investigating the area to determine the most effective way to sneak in and out, and so in 440 Leonidas carried out an operation to liberate Albus III. The details of Albus' freeing are not as well known as those of Aberforth's assassination, but it is known that Albus was snuck out of the jail under a false floor in a carriage. Albus and Leonidas then worked in conjunction to plot the assassination of the current ruler Grant Belthion, which they pulled off that winter by poisoning him at a feast. Leonidas was again a target of ire among the Dorians, especially by the Belthionist supporters, who assassinated him in early 441. Category:Bicanals Category:Insurgents